Wallow Louder
by crowlow
Summary: Hisagi Shuuhei gets together with Ichimaru Gin in the Living World for a game of give-and-take, that is far more lethal than the scarred shinigami initially thought. . . Warning: knife/blood play. Originally posted July 9th, 2010.


When the enigmatic shopkeeper had hinted at something "hidden" - as hidden as his eyes beneath the deceitful shadow of his hat when he smirked at you - you had been skeptical. You'd wanted to think that it was all roguish tongue-in-cheek. But despite what you wanted to believe you went searching anyway, and when you _did _find him, you were shocked. You didn't know how he was still alive, or how he'd made it so far without Soul Society noticing. You also didn't know how he was able to smile at you after all that had happened. Initially you were angry with yourself for not being able to comprehend any of it, because you'd long since grown tired of not understanding. But then you remembered that no one had ever been able to understand Ichimaru Gin, and why should you, of all people, be the exception?

One thing you _did _understand, though, was the suggestive shortening of his zanpakutou. The slow, deliberate contraction of razor-sharp metal. You didn't know how he knew, but there was no doubt that he did as he stared at you with eyes closed. He grinned at you playfully - _dangerously _- and fondled the shortened tip of Shinsou with his fingers. Your own hand tightened around the thin rod of a released Kazeshini, and you couldn't help rubbing your thumb along the smooth, obsidian surface. You'd felt your inner world starting to quake, thrumming with reluctant shudders, like the painful and erratic inhales of someone struggling for air.

The routine should have never started after that, but it inevitably did. You hate yourself for it, because it is a betrayal of Soul Society and it makes you no better than him or your late captain. But it is something you need; something you _want_; something you lust after to the detriment of your soul. Something about Ichimaru is hauntingly fascinating, and his cryptic nature keeps you from looking away. It's like watching a starving raptor hunting in the dead of night, through the obscure shadows cast by the moon between the trees of a decaying forest. It is captivating, and stimulating, and - above all else - terrifying.

Maybe if his hair didn't look so silver beneath the lonely light of the moon, or if he didn't always shorten Shinsou knowingly before dragging the blade over your arm in a teasing caress. . . It drives you crazy that he knows; drives you crazy with embarrassment, agony, and painful curiosity. How does he know? How does he know that you've been to that warehouse, which stands like the ruined fortress of a lost age, of something long forgotten (which, in a sense, is exactly what it is)?

How does he know that you've stared at that knife-like zanpakutou as it spun around a broad finger? How does he know that you've imagined the sting of that small blade as it bites into your flesh, at the same time that you envision carving into that silver-haired relic with Kazeshini?

You don't know how he knows, and when he's digging Shinsou's blade across your chest (making you writhe and whine), you no longer bother with trying to figure it out. You simply arch your back and ask for more with a wordless moan. You simply watch as he grins at you in the dark, and runs his knife-like zanpakutou downwards, along the quivering cleft between your taut abs, all the way to your navel. Blood expels and collects in the dip of your stomach, pools there hotly, and Ichimaru leans down to lap it up. He covers your navel with his surprisingly full lips, and sucks up the blood with a loud slurping sound.

You haven't been harder in a long time, and you haven't groaned so wantonly, either. You close your eyes and open your legs to welcome the heat of his mouth while his hands lay cold and bony against your waist. At first you remain shut-eyed and lie there willingly, focusing all of your attention on the feel of his suckling mouth around your cock. You cradle him there with trembling legs, reach down to run your fingers through the raw silk softness of his hair; keep your hand there to hold him down while your impending orgasm builds.

And when you finally chance a glimpse of him - study the way his head bobs in your lap - you realize that the red of his lips around your cock (stained with _your _blood) is far more arousing than fantasizing about the brightly rouged lips of a brothel whore, on nights that you share dissolute, drunken stories with your fellow shinigami.

That is the final push that sends you over the edge, and he drinks you down while squeezing your cock for more, milking you with his parchment-pale, winter-chilled hand. Once you've recovered, it's your turn, and you wish you could be as languid as he'd been. Instead your cuts to his body are fast, almost brutal in the face of the anger that is bubbling inside of you; the anger that you've held onto for more than a century. All the savage thoughts and the bitter words that you've yet to say aloud are echoing with deafening clarity.

_He wasn't there. I know why, I know _why_, but even _now _he. Still. Isn't. _There_._

You can feel it rising up like bile, burning you from the inside out. You are eroding and even the tears behind your eyes feel like acid. You slice into the man beneath you spitefully, paying special attention to the sensitive skin at the backs of his legs with one of Kazeshini's sickles. You can imagine that dark-skinned spirit lying prone in your inner world as you do this, clawing at its own burnt flesh with one hand while it jerks off with the other. You can imagine the thing's shrill keens as it smears blood over its body, and you can see that its blue eyes are wide open, staring vapidly at a black sky that pours hot, thick, caustic rain.

You are ashamed, aroused, and sick to your stomach, but even though you feel sick, you don't want it to stop. Ichimaru doesn't seem to want you to stop, either, despite the wetness at the corner of his eyes. He breathes shallowly and helps you to get his thin legs around your neck, and his smile looks openly _cracked _as silent tears leak into his ears. You feel the hot blood from the cuts on his legs against your shoulders, and he lets his head fall back while mouthing something torpidly; something that looks very much like your name, but isn't.

You ignore it, choosing to screw your eyes shut as you sheathe yourself in one blindingly fast movement.

Your thrusts are just as brutal as your cutting. You hold onto his bony hips with sweaty hands, and your back and shoulders are slick with his blood. It makes things slippery, and Ichimaru hooks his ankles together behind your head so his legs won't slip. You find better purchase with the front of his thighs, your fingers biting into undamaged skin that you'd spared earlier. You drive into him wildly and you know that you're making him bleed there, too, but you tell yourself it's fine. The two of you have done this before, and it's fine. You keep going desperately, harder, harder and _harder_. You imagine forcing yourself so far that when you come it's inside of his skull. You imagine letting all of your darkest secrets soak into the mind of someone who (you hope) will never tell.

"Che, Shuu-chan, not s'rough. You're gonna break somethin' in both of us."

His words are lazy and breathless, and his eyes are open just a crack to watch you. He's grinning wide and happy, but in spite of that, you find yourself halting abruptly. You know that he's teasing you- or, maybe, you _don't_ know, and that's what gives you pause. There is playfulness to whatever Ichimaru says - whenever, wherever, or however - and because of that, there's no way of telling whether he's joking or being serious. And just the possibility that he _could _be serious is enough to short-circuit the mode you'd set yourself to. You wish he hadn't said anything at all, because when he does it wakes you up to the fact that you are truly disgusted with yourself for letting things get to this point.

But he doesn't really give you the time to wallow in the revival of your revulsion. He purses his lips together, and the look of them with their edges curled is mocking. The squint of his eyes is mocking too, especially when he reaches up to gather the silvery wisps of his hair between skeletal fingers. He pinches the long strands together above his forehead, then drags his hand down slowly, pulling the fringe into a sharp point that lands between his eyebrows.

And then he offers you a truly psychotic grin. A grin that is different from all the rest; a grin that is not _his_. You shudder to the very core of your being and release your breath in a rush, eyes still burning with the prick of dry tears. You forget about being sickened and instead feel the sting of the countless other emotions you are harboring. The fury, the want for retribution, the longing. You gather them together in a whirlwind - into a tornado of grays and black - and you use that vicious power to drive yourself to completion.

You grip Ichimaru's cock in your hand and work it roughly, while gritting your teeth and pounding into him with renewed vehemence.

* * *

Later, you watch him from the corner of your eye as you wipe yourself down. He's sprawled on his back and his legs are still open, the backs of them sticking to the messy sheets. He complains in a sleepy, contented slur about the caking blood, his lips drawn in such a sluggish way that you can clearly see the deeply set creases that hug the corners of his mouth. You keep your gaze on him as you pull on your shihakushou, and he suddenly rolls over with a lightning fast agility, so that he's lying on his stomach. He props himself on bony elbows, his head hanging between angular shoulders. You try not to stare at the violent streaks of red that run the length of his lanky legs, but they attract your attention anyway. You feel a pang of guilt and nausea, and you're considering cleaning him up too when, abruptly, his head whips around. He squints at you hard over his shoulder, before grinning slow and wide.

"What's takin' so long, Shuu-chan?" Ichimaru croons, his voice somehow managing to raise an octave and dip in pitch at the same time. You think that it's meant to be a blithe, unpretentious probe, but the curve of his mouth and the pinched look of his eyes are impishly sinister. "Usually you're gone lickety split, an' without so much as a kiss goodbye~"

The corner of your mouth gives a minute twitch, like it wants to frown but you won't allow it. You continue to stare at the other man as you slowly tie the white sash at your waist, before putting your arms through the sleeveless holes of your captain's haori. You shrug the white material onto your shoulders, and think to yourself quietly about Ichimaru's question. Yes, normally you _are _gone "lickety split." It makes you feel even dirtier than the act itself, to flee from the scene so quickly, but you can never stand to stay in rooms that smell of drying blood; can't stand to look at pale skin bathed in the color of death. You close your eyes against the thought and clench your jaw, running your hand through your hair slowly and resisting the urge to touch your fingertips to the three scars on your face.

For weeks you've been seeking the silver-haired exile to indulge in the dark reality of your sinister desires (the things that you've kept buried for far too long), because you were scared of what would happen if you _didn't _indulge them, somehow. You'd thrown yourself into this twisted relationship to quell the ache; to sate the thirst; to keep the thoughts at bay, at least for a little while. But you refused to stay in that dark reality for too long, and once you appeased the hunger (for the time being) with one of your bloody rendezvous, you'd return to Soul Society. You'd go back like you'd done absolutely nothing wrong in the Living World, and you would hope that when the others looked at you they weren't seeing straight through you to what you _really _are - to what you'd _really _done. When they smiled, you would smile back (reluctantly); when they laughed, you would laugh with them (unconvincingly); and when they offered you a drink, you would accept it (too eagerly). At times when you found yourself unable to avoid their questions, you would answer them with an altered version of the truth, and then you'd lock yourself away in your office, to finish what paperwork you may have missed while you were away. You'd try to smother the guilt, the sickness, the very _idea _of it all. You could never pretend that it hadn't happened, but you could at least tell yourself that it wouldn't happen again. You could tell yourself that being back in Soul Society was the start of something new.

And it almost worked, because you'd had the raven-haired captain of the Sixth Division, who (inadvertently) encouraged those determined (but despairing) attempts. In all your years before the war, you hadn't had much to do with Kuchiki Byakuya, but your promotion changed that. You started talking to him out of simple necessity, to discuss things that had to do with your shared captaincy, and steadily that bond evolved beyond that of basic, military protocol. When his visits came later than was customary, you'd felt the beginnings of a shift. And when he started asking you things that didn't have to do with work, no matter how cold and detached his tone and expression remained, you'd felt the plates of that world shift even farther.

Soon you were following him when he'd leave your office; when night had fallen, and when the ink from your pen was drying on white parchment like the stain of blood on dead, ashen flesh. You'd follow the Kuchiki heir into rooms meant for secrets (like every other room in your life, you were realizing), and you'd tangle yourself in his fine, silken sheets. You would strip him naked and try to want the purity of his nobleness, over the filth of a ghost that haunted you mercilessly. You would have him fuck the perverse depravity of your base desires into black oblivion. But, no matter how many times you'd go to his bed, it wouldn't work. If Kuchiki-taichou had really been able to fuck everything into oblivion (or, if _you _had been able to _let _him), then you wouldn't be here. You wouldn't have Ichimaru Gin sprawled beside you on a soiled mattress, with the evidence of your unresolved hatred shrouding him like the violent execution of a hollow.

Now, you wish that you could go back to Soul Society. You wish that you could find the fair-skinned, slate-eyed captain of the Sixth; that you could throw yourself against a wall for him, and fuck it all away with his cool, powerful, but oddly tender touch. _Another time, please,_ you think to ,_ Taichou. . . As long as you keep taking, I'll keep trying. I'll keep trying to want it more than what I want from the Living World._

You can't go back this time, though. You are stuck here on a mission that the captain-commander appointed to you personally, and you can't go back until you've completed it. And maybe that's the reason that you're taking your time; maybe that's the reason you aren't already gone, back in Soul Society, at a desk, waiting for _something _to distract you. Duty has stranded you here, so close to the very heart of all your problems, and it's driving you under. It's churning the rancor inside you faster, and faster, and faster. It's starting to seep through to the surface, oozing from the pores of your flesh, coating your eyes with a sour film. It's driving you under, into dark rooms that seem to exist at the bottom of the Earth, where monsters lurk in every shadow, waiting to make you shudder and gasp and sob.

"Don't you know that the world's got curfews for young'uns like you, Shuu-chan?"

You jerk reflexively, eyes gone wide and your heart slamming against your chest with a dull thump. Ichimaru's mouth is next to your ear, and you can feel the cold of his body, sending your own heat plunging like a nosedive into icy waters. He is sitting directly behind you, with his naked legs on either side of your hips, and his arms sliding around your neck like a noose. "It's after the sun goes down that monsters come lookin'," he continues, grinning against the shell of your ear, "and if we didn't tuck you rug rats into your beds all snug an' cozy like, they'd snack on your innocent little heads like konpeitou."

A heartbeat, then two, then three. You remain silent as you calm yourself, the surprise of his sudden approach subsiding so that you may relax (but by no means become negligent). You glance down to see his hands, spot one curled into a claw against your chest, while the other teases the edge of the choker around your throat with the sharp point of Shinsou.

"This 'rug rat' hasn't been tucked in for a long time," you murmur, dark eyes turning slowly to follow the line of his left arm as it curls around you. Your fingers give a twitch, aching for the hilt of Kazeshini. The spirit's vindictive presence was lurking on the outskirts of your inner world, but now you feel it springing from the shadows with an agitated snarl. "And monsters must have snacked on my konpeitou already, otherwise I wouldn't be here with you."

Your tone is neutral, but there is enough edge to your voice to suggest that your words _could _be an insult. One thing that you've learned while being with Ichimaru Gin, is that you must be as double-edged as he is, or you won't have a chance at fighting (let alone surviving) his clandestine ways. It seems to have worked, because the other man is incredibly still behind you, and incredibly quiet. You give him a moment before you turn your head slightly, so you can glance at him over your shoulder. He stares at you with his eyes closed, and his smile still wide. He would appear to be cheerful if it wasn't for the rigid, frozen look of his face. And then, his eyes start to open. You imagine the sound of rusted door hinges after years of disuse, groaning stiffly under the strain. Dark, murky red greets you between whitened lashes, their wounded depths seeming to bleed like the rest of him when you had cut into his flesh earlier. He stares at you like that, his grin still frozen, eyes barely open but open just enough to chill you with their uncanny, saturated scrutiny. As you stare back at him unblinkingly, you start to think that the look of his eyes is eerily similar to that of scabs which are picked raw. You think that his eyelids are the skin that grows over an injury to heal it, and whenever Ichimaru Gin opens his eyes, he's peeling that curative flesh away to let the wound bleed anew.

"You're right, Shuu-chan," he drawls after a long minute, the stiff edges of his mouth softening, so that his smile falters for a beat before springing back, like the jerk and flutter of an insect's wing. Slowly his eyes start to drift downwards, focusing somewhere near your shoulders. You realize that he's staring at the ends of your hair, and something in his gaze sparks. It ignites, and a new layer of the scab seems to have burned away. It looks like the dull hue of dried blood has crumbled, so that a new, brighter surge of red can emerge, and his full lips continue to curl, and curl, like the smoke of a cigarette that refuses to burn out. "You crept into this boogieman's den a long time ago, and now you're too deep down in the dark ta find your way back out, ain'chya?"

The other man's bloodied eyes dart to meet yours, and suddenly Ichimaru grabs a fistful of your hair in his hand. He yanks on it none too gently, and you grit your teeth against the stab of pain to your scalp while he rubs the dark, sable strands between his fingers. "I think I like your hair this long, Shuu-chan. It reminds me of somethin'."

He leans closer, so close that your noses are almost touching, and opens his eyes wider to stare at you with such a strange intensity that you find yourself holding your breath. "Reminds me of somethin', the same way I think mine must remind _you _of a certain somethin'. Am I right, Shuu-chan?"

The silver-haired exile says that in such a way that it sends a chill tripping its way up your spine. In his tone you hear some implicit _threat_, and he is looking at you with such a menacing intent, such cruelty in the sheen of his white teeth (as if his spittle is venom), that you know he's implying something dangerous.

"If you're gonna play with _my _somethin', Shuu-chan, don'chya think I oughtta play with yours? It ain't fair if you end up havin' more fun than me."

Eyes shooting wider, you open your mouth to utter a response, but what comes out instead of words is a strangled hiss when Ichimaru stabs Shinsou into your shoulder blade. He pierces you all the way to the hilt and extends the blade past your chest, while sealing his grinning mouth to yours and biting through your lip.


End file.
